If you’re in the web design market, you’re going to find that competition online is rather fierce.  While there are always people, as well as companies looking for web design companies, I wanted to give you some tips that I have used in order to gather up some new clients.  As long as you take action and you have motivation, you will find that many of these tips should work.

#1 Go local with Craigslist – With Craigslist you’re going to have to be aggressive, and what I mean by that is that you’re going to have to put up an advertisement at least once a week.  Be sure to change it up, create a simple ad copy, and be sure to link to a portfolio.  Even if your town is small, you’ll be surprised at what kind of response that you can get.

#2 Freelance sites online – There are some great freelance sites online such as Elance.com.  While you’re going to be competing with countries such as India, you may have to low ball your offer.  Now, I have done this before and about 75% of the time, it works out fantastic.  The reason this is is because you’re going to not only get great word of mouth traffic, but repetitive work as well.

#3 Your chamber of commerce – I highly advise you to join your Chamber of Commerce.  Each and every town has one.  Join them, attend the meetings and converse with the other businesses that are there.  When I went to my first meeting, I was able to snag 5 jobs!  Trust me, people need all sorts of services and are willing to pay.

#4 PPC / SEO – If you know anything about PPC, or even SEO, learn it.  This is a great way to target not only the people in your area, but people across the globe.  Be sure to tweak, tweak and tweak some more.  Find the perfect ad, as well as the keywords that convert for you.  Sooner or later, you should be able to rely just on the word of mouth traffic alone.

#5 Try your local newspaper – Yes, local newspapers are still around and no matter how big your town is, there is going to be one.  Put an ad in here, as well as online, and you’ll be impressed with the results that you get.  Even if you have a town of 20,000, if you convert at .05%, that’s 10 people!  It isn’t that hard.

Take action, be motivated and you will find that you can do anything.  There are so many alternatives out there that you can use when you want to advertise your services.  Sooner or later, once you get big enough, you won’t even need to advertise.

This guest post was written by Elizabeth Cutten.  She helps run a business credit comparison site / business blog packed with tips, tricks and more at http://www.findbizcards.com